Polanski, Payne, Coens, Soderbergh and Ozon return to Cannes

A whole host of Cannes favourites will be back on the Croisette next month for the 66th Cannes Film Festival.

After opening with Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, the festival will feature highlights from past winners and contenders in the competition. Among the most high profile films included this year are the Coen Brother’s Inside Llewyn Davis, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, Roman Polanski’s La Venus a la Fourrure, François Ozon’s Jeune et Jolie and Steven Soderbergh’s biopic of the flamboyant Liberace, Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas as the eponymous pianist and Matt Damon as his young lover, in a film that the director himself has said will be his last.

Reuniting with his Drive star Ryan Gosling, director Nicolas Winding Refn is back with Only God Forgives. Another reunion sees We Own The Night director James Gray back with his star Joaquin Phoenix in The Immigrant.

The Oscar-nominated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s follow up to A Separation is among this year’s contenders; Le Passé stars A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim and The Artist’s Bérénice Bejo.

Some high profile actors are getting behind the camera; Valeria Bruni-Tadeschi directs herself in the competition contender Un chateau en Italie and James Franco’s As I Lay Dying features in the Un Certain Regard category, which also includes the new film from Sophia Coppola’s new film The Bling Ring.

Margin Call’s JC Chandor’s new film All is Lost is screening out of competition, as is Guillaume Canet’s Blood Ties.

The only British director in the line-up is Stephen Frears, with his take on American Vietnam-era politics, Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight.